Monthly Archives: May 2015

I really liked this book.
I really liked the way it was held together
by its cover and its spine,
the way the pages were neatly sized,
the print readable and fine.
I really liked the way it came to an end.
I mean, there were no more pages.
It just finished, which I thought
was really clever.
I mean, you can’t be expected
to sit and read the same book forever.
I really don’t understand why this author
is not as famous as Shakespeare or Dickens,
but perhaps it is because, unlike them,
he is not long dead,
in fact, he’s still alive.
I really like the way some authors
contrive to still survive.
If I were an author,
I’d live on cups of tea and cans of peas,
and write about characters
who did not live here, but somewhere over seas,
and they’d all be happy in the end,
and they’d all live long and well,
for I would want the best for them,
as it would be my tale to tell.
This book has its own page on Amazon,
but this is its first review.
I hope this makes you want to buy it.
If someone writes a book,
I think it is the least that you can do.
I really like the way you don’t have to count
how many pages there are in this book,
as there is a number at the bottom of each one.
There are in fact three hundred and thirty four
pages in this book, I note in a moment gone.
And you don’t have to forget what it’s called, either,
as it has its title at the top of every left hand page.
If you like Harry Potter,
you have probably read those books,
but maybe not this one.
Personally, when I read a book,
I like a pot of tea,
and on my plate, a scone.
Oh, well, enough said is said enough,
as I am sure someone’s grandpa used to say.
Next time I will review another book,
and tell you of other players
in quite a different play.
I really liked the way this book
is divided into chapters.
That way it is not just presented
as one long block of words.
I know you cannot hear them,
but I am now pleasantly distracted
by a bush of nest building birds.
I give this book five stars,
that is all you are allowed.
I would like to give it billions more,
but even then, I fear,
it may get lost among the crowd.

White crane migrate
from one land of lakes to another,
long lane takes you over any border,
hold in your heart
the yellow glow and warmth of summer,
come back again,
rest in reedy, shallow water.
You nest in Armenia,
India, Japan to China.
You glimmer in your picture.
Wake, lift from your lake,
fly the sky of summer.
In dream your path I take.
The air your kingdom,
you are unaware of your freedom,
but I am, white crane,
while humans make other humans
refugees from their homeland,
what was built long ago leave behind broken,
my spirit you have woken, white crane.

I was inside a cloud of birds,
and they were all singing,
and flapping their wings,
and I was not flying,
but standing on a mound,
and beyond my left ear,
in a screen in the sky,
bells bigger than cathedral bells
were swaying, to and fro,
with no sound of ringing,
and slowly the birds flew and faded,
and I was sat in my chair,
not feeling anything,
just light, quite empty,
and I lifted my mug from the floor,
and took another sip of my coffee,
and listened to the birds,
outside, in the garden,
nest building, territory claiming, singing.

Leonora Carrington.
Now there’s a name.
One to ponder, meditate upon,
remain in memory,
as out from a line a stone shines,
a spark glints, isolates itself,
glistens in the masonry.
The woman it belonged to
had to be someone, and she was,
chose to be a painter,
crafted dreams of worlds on canvas
for she and others to see,
to show that the further in you go,
the more will come to be.
So I came to see her works
in the Tate gallery, Liverpool, my home city,
while outside, I was aware of boats and sailing ships,
roped to capstans in the Albert Dock,
and sea gulls that cried over the Mersey.
It was her name and not her fame
that drew me to her art.
Yes, I think I get it now, surrealism.
When I was younger, I thought it was extreme,
now I know, it is not so much of dream,
but of the other world from which we are never free.
There is no divide, who can decide
on which side we stand, in our true land
or in the other world, stranger than dream
where the spirit can travel free.
Far from my birth, closer to my death,
I understand these images now.
The other world exists in the world we see.
There is no divide, it is always there.
Stood on the railway station platform,
there it is, in the faint emerald filigree,
the torn silver web in the tunnel wall I see.
They are not easy to see, some people,
said the man, looking down the lines for the train.
What he meant, I could not ask.
He never would, never could explain.
Personality is fluid, not static. I get that.
You are one person with one person,
another with another.
You never failed, you never lost,
you never touched the skin,
rather you reached within,
held the breathing heart,
cupped the unsheltered soul,
created the gentle giantess,
the guardian of the egg,
from which hatched the Eluhim,
spirits of birds and beasts,
free of the body, unhampered by its weight,
unrestricted by its structure of flesh and bone,
so the lion leaps, the white ox prances,
dances on hind legs,
a badger carries a carp to the Tower of Nagas.
There are things that are unsayable.
That’s what art is for.
They are your words. I agree.
I wanted to go where your pathway led,
where origins are known,
the unsayable is said.
You have been here too long.
Why don’t you leave?
said a voice in a video in some other room.
Yes, I will, in a while, I answered in my mind.
Further away from birth to death I go,
still search for truth, for lack of love in life I grieve.
You never called, you never wrote,
you never lifted the phone.
You built a cradle to float,
painted with birds and beasts,
and left the child to sail alone.
You never thought, you never dreamed
such an exhibition would be.
Though you are gone, look what you left behind,
your art for us to see.
You made masks for The Tempest.
You must have loved Prospero,
who conjured spirits and spoke to Ariel,
before he buried his book, broke his staff.
You found the doors, you found the locks,
you found the box that held the keys.
Outside, in the Albert Dock,
I stood, looked down upon the deck
of an anchored ship.
It was brown and had two masts,
and was called Ebu, and it said,
nothing lasts, nothing lasts,
and few sail out on the wild, wide, stretching sea,
and those that do come back with tales
we love to hear, but which of them can we say is true?
You helped me see there is no divide.
I do not have to wait for death or sleep
the other world to see.
You helped me find the door, find the lock,
find the box that hid the key

Don't ever change yourself to impress someone, cause they should be impressed that you don't change to please others -- When you are going through something hard and wonder where God is, always remember that the teacher is always quiet during a test --- Unknown